Kalpavriksh believes that conservation cannot be sustainable or just if it ignores the livelihood needs and aspirations of local communities living in and around natural resources. Effective and ethical conservation governance must therefore prioritize local communities, while recognising that these communities are internally diverse, shaped by differences of caste, class, gender, and politics. This perspective underpins Kalpavriksh’s commitment to democratic conservation governance, which emphasizes participation, rights, and shared visions for sustainable development.
In India, the Forest Rights Act (2006) provides a key framework for such an approach by empowering forest-dwelling communities to manage and protect forests. Kalpavriksh’s focus on democratizing conservation emerged in the late 1990s following legal interventions around protected areas, which highlighted the harms of exclusionary conservation. Since then, it has promoted participatory planning, contributed to national biodiversity processes, and advocated for progressive environmental laws that balance ecological protection with social justice.
Under this theme, our activities include ensuring the reach of the law to remote communities through imparting training, producing and disseminating simplified policy briefs that speak to ground realities; focusing on the law’s implementation within Protected Areas; carrying out studies on good examples of democratic forest governance; issuing public statements and publishing other communication pieces for advancing rights-based conservation; conducting fact-finding studies on FRA implementation and; producing status reports of FRA implementation.
Kalpavriksh’s concern and focus with democratizing conservation efforts began through an unsuccessful legal intervention in the Supreme Court in 1997-98, which was hearing a petition filed by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – India regarding implementation of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 by states and union territories. With the court ordering all state governments to complete the procedures for settling people's rights inside protected areas, this created a situation where not only the legitimate rights of local communities were being eradicated, but was also threatening wildlife through hurried denotifications of protected areas by state governments, to avoid the headache of going through the rights settlement process. In late 1999, Kalpavriksh convinced the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), GOI, to carry out a widely participatory and decentralised process of planning a national strategy for action on conserving India’s biodiversity. This resulted in Kalpavriksh coordinating the technical execution of the UNDP-funded National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan process. Besides these, Kalpavriksh has constantly strived to democratize conservation governance through drafting proposed Bills – National Biodiversity Bill, Forest Rights Bill, amendments to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Indian Forest Act, 1927 and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. At the same time, Kalpavriksh has strived to keep the discussions going around the ideas of biodiversity conservation, challenging established practices of conservation that are harming the sustenance and justice aspects of conservation.
...
- Focus on PAs
- Focus on PAs in Uttarakhand
- Focus on forest rights of women in PAs
- Focus on CFRs in Maharashtra
- Study prior to FRA in Maharashtra
- Studies prior to FRA – South Asia
- Studies prior to FRA – international viewpoint
- Focus on SC case on FRA
- Citizens’ Reports
- Simplified FRA – Marathi
- Policy brief of CFRs – English and Hindi
- Communication pieces
- Public statements
- FRA and forest diversion
- Advocacy efforts
- Research and documentation
- Policy critiques
- Submissions
- Policy briefs
Click here for POLICY BRIEFS